Editorial: Farrakhan and the Left

“The powerful Jews are my enemy,” remarked Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan at his organization’s annual “Saviours’ Day” celebration in Chicago in late February. That was just one of several choice anti-semitic tropes. Another one, oddly stated in the third person: “The FBI has been the worst enemy of black advancement. Can you prove that Farrakhan? You see, the Jews have control over those agencies of government.” With the exception of CNN’s Jake Tapper, hardly anyone in the mainstream media seemed to notice or care.

Farrakhan’s anti-Jewish rhetoric is well known and has a long history. In 1984, for instance, he said that “Hitler was a very great man”; and in 1985, “Don’t you forget, when it’s God who puts you in the ovens, it’s forever.” What’s far less known about Farrakhan is the warmth with which he’s embraced by some influential members of the American progressive movement.

Tamika Mallory, a co-leader of the Women’s March, was at the “Saviours Day” speech this year; two years before she posted a photo with Farrakhan to Instagram in which she offered him praise and birthday wishes. Linda Sarsour—the famed left-wing Palestinian-American activist and provocateur—commented on a photo of Farrakhan on the Instagram page of Carmen Perez, another Women’s March co-leader. “God bless him,” Sarsour said of Farrakhan.

How strange that self-proclaimed “intersectional” feminists such as Sarsour, Mallory, and Perez would support an openly misogynistic and racist demagogue like Farrakhan. Among his more recent offerings: “When a woman does not know how to cook and the right foods to cook, she's preparing death for herself, her husband and her children.” He’s also observed that “man is supposed to have rule, especially in his own house . . . and when she rules you, you become her child.” Directly to women he asserted: “You are a failure if you can’t keep a man, no profession can keep you happy!” One wonders what it is about him that these feminists find so alluring.

More troubling, perhaps, is the recently surfaced photo of a 2005 Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) meeting with Farrakhan. It featured then-senator Barack Obama posing for a photo with the Nation of Islam leader. The photographer, Askia Muhammad, now says the CBC asked him to suppress the image because it might have derailed Obama’s campaign. Nor is that the only time CBC members hobnobbed with Farrakhan: As Jeryl Bier pointed out in the Wall Street Journal in January, several of them can be seen shaking hands and hugging in a 2009 YouTube video.

We doubt the photo with Farrakhan would have hurt Obama, who easily weathered revelations of his long association with the similarly anti-semitic and anti-American Jeremiah Wright. These associations are troubling all the same, however the preponderance of mainstream journalists may wish to look the other way. We suspect that if a photo emerges some day of Donald Trump or George W. Bush grinning with Richard Spencer, the New York Times will make room for it on page 1A.

When asked about the CBC’s meeting and his relationship with Farrakhan, Rep. Danny K. Davis (D-Ill.) defended his relationship with Farrakhan by remarking that “the world is so much bigger than Farrakhan and the Jewish question and his position on that and so forth.” That phrase, “the Jewish question”—where have we heard that before?

http://www.weeklystandard.com/editorial-farrakhan-and-the-left/article/2011855

Farrakhan is the left's favorite Jew hating homophobe. He can say what he likes and get a pass.